He shoots, he scores!

In the Michigan hockey program’s 90-year history, some 600 players have scored more than 10,000 total goals. But the man who scored the team’s very first goal in January 1923 might still be the most impressive one of the bunch.

He was the son of legendary American architect Albert Kahn, who built the most recognizable buildings in Detroit and Ann Arbor, almost all of which still stand. He pioneered the new discipline of neurosurgery, serving 22 years as chief of the department at the University of Michigan Medical Center. In his free time, he liked to fly planes, speak half a dozen languages, and hang out with folks like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Charles Lindbergh.

But to his teammates, back in 1923, Edgar “Eddie” Kahn, MD ’24, was simply an exceptional college hockey player.

Kahn is pictured above, front and center, with the 1924 hockey team. (Image courtesy of the U-M Bentley Historical Library.)

Late bloomer

If you could have seen him in high school, you would have been wise to predict none of this. Certainly, his famous father didn’t.

More than half a century after Eddie Kahn’s father passed away, Albert Kahn remains on the short list of great American architects. He designed more than 2,000 buildings, including almost every architecturally significant structure in downtown Detroit: the Fisher Building, the Belle Isle Casino, the Detroit Golf Club, the Detroit Athletic Club, the Grosse Pointe Country Club, the Detroit Police Headquarters, and the homes of The Detroit News and The Detroit Free Press.

In Ann Arbor, Kahn designed such iconic buildings as Burton Memorial Tower, Angell Hall, West Engineering, the Natural Science Building, the Hatcher Graduate Library, and the hospital (Old Main), not to mention the Ann Arbor News building, the Delta Gamma sorority, and the Psi Upsilon fraternity—plus his personal favorites, the Clements Library and Hill Auditorium. So farsighted was Albert Kahn’s vision that every one of those buildings except the old hospital, which was replaced just a few years ago, is still fulfilling its original purpose.

His son, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter.

His own path

Eddie Kahn admired his father immensely, but his first day interning at Albert’s firm was such a disaster, “I put on my hat, left the office, and never returned again,” he wrote in his autobiography, Journal of a Neurosurgeon.

After he graduated from high school with “a most undistinguished record, scholastically and otherwise,” Kahn wrote, “it was decided that a post-graduate year in a preparatory school before I went to college couldn’t make things worse.”

But eight weeks into his studies at Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts, Kahn was failing 15 of his 22 credits. Things finally began to turn around during a baseball game against arch-rival Exeter. “I was as tense as could be,” Kahn would recall. “An easy fly came to me, and I was shaking as I caught it. It was the same with the next one. But from then on, I had complete confidence and everything seemed easy. That afternoon, I pulled in seven flies, including some rather difficult chances.”

Kahn would take that confidence back to the classroom, where he honed the discipline that would set him up for medical school and a pioneering career. Brain surgery may be woefully complex, but for Kahn some of the qualities needed to do it well were best learned on a field of grass and a sheet of ice. “I cannot overstress how much confidence simplifies the task of the conscientious, competent surgeon,” he would say. “On the other hand, overconfidence is very dangerous for any surgeon.”

“A hard fighter”

When he enrolled at Michigan in 1918, Kahn lived in a beautiful brick home his father designed across Washtenaw Avenue from “the rock.” He got through both his undergraduate and medical training in six years, working in the very hospital his father had designed.

With what limited free time he had, Kahn played on the informal hockey team, then on the varsity team once Coach Joseph Barss—who also was a medical student—launched the official program. The team’s second season, 1924, was undoubtedly the first and only year in college hockey history when a team’s captain and coach were medical school classmates.

“My dad talked about Eddie Kahn quite a bit,” Barss’ son told me. “I know they were good friends who respected each other a great deal.”

On the eve of the program’s opening night on Jan. 12, 1923, The Michigan Daily wrote, “Kahn is probably the fastest man on the team and is a hard fighter.” The student writers later gushed that Kahn “played a furiously aggressive game from start to finish. He was knocked out twice but stayed in the lineup and performed sensationally.”

And so he did. Kahn scored or assisted on at least half of his team’s goals that season, often by skating the entire length of the ice with the puck. In 1924, Kahn’s last year in medical school, the diminutive forward became the team’s second captain.

He would remain close to Michigan hockey throughout his life, even as he gained international acclaim as a surgeon. And although he was heard to remark the game just wasn’t the same “since all the boys started playing inside,” he attended at least one game every season, with the exception of the war years.

Friends in high places

Despite Kahn’s demanding career and intense work ethic, he was able to mix in some adventure, too. After graduating, he spent some time practicing in Vienna and Russia, where he met with Ivan Pavlov, the scientist who won the 1904 Nobel Prize for his famous discovery that ringing a bell before each meal eventually caused dogs to salivate at the sound of the bell alone, a phenomenon now known as the “Pavlovian response.”

After he returned to the States and started working at U-M’s hospital, he volunteered for the Army medical corps from 1940-45, for one dollar a year. He entered France via Normandy’s Utah Beach just a few weeks after D-Day, mended soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge, and was among the first to arrive in Paris when the Allies liberated the City of Light.

“I cannot overstress how much confidence simplifies the task of the conscientious, competent surgeon.”—Eddie Kahn

“Kahn knew Europe well,” said Rudy Reichert, who played for Michigan in the early 1940s and went on to become chief of staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital in town. “He knew Gertrude Stein and Hemingway personally. When the Americans entered Paris, it was Eddie who brought the U.S. generals into the city, because he knew his way around and knew about a million languages, so he could show them where to go.”

Shortly after he returned to Ann Arbor, Kahn ran into Harry Bennett, Henry Ford’s infamous union buster, at a cocktail party. Bennett asked Kahn if he wanted to go flying the next day. With Charles Lindbergh.

Lindbergh, who tested planes at nearby Willow Run during the war, maneuvered the aircraft with an ease that Kahn, who was a licensed pilot himself, could only admire. “I have never seen a man so relaxed or so much part of an airplane,” Kahn wrote.

When Bennett dared Lindbergh to buzz the Huron River, however, the plane didn’t have nearly enough power to clear the riverbank in front of them. “I could only think that at least I was going to go down in good company,” Kahn wrote. As they flew closer to the side of the bluff, Lindbergh suddenly veered the plane to the right, gracefully avoiding disaster—with a grin.

Lasting legacy

Kahn succeeded his mentor at the University Hospital, Dr. Max Peet, as head of the neurosurgery section in 1949, a position he held for 22 years until he retired in 1971. Along the way he completed two editions of Correlative Neurosurgery, an essential textbook for generations of doctors. It does not, however, make for light reading. Some of Kahn’s chapters include, “Papillomas of the Choroid Plexus of the Fourth Ventricle,” “Section of the Ninth Nerve for Glossophyaryngeal Neuralgia,” and the always popular, “Lipomas of the Conus Mdullaris and Cauda Equina.”

“Great empathy for his patients, honesty, humility, and a fine sense of humor were his hallmarks, in addition to his skillful hands,” said his former colleague, Dr. Richard C. Schneider. “No physician was more deeply admired and loved by his patients.”

Eddie Kahn was an original. He hated mundane tasks like lab work; he resisted playing all the holes of Barton Hills Country Club in numerical order; and because he was already independently wealthy from his father’s fortune, he insisted on working for a salary of one dollar a year. “But he never had any money on him!” Reichert recalls. “You’d go down to the cafeteria, where it was 35-cents for a meal, and he’d say, ‘Geez, do you have 35 cents for me?’ The guy was just oblivious to money.

“People would surround him at the cafeteria just to hear his stories of all these famous people, and he knew ‘em all. But he was also an extremely modest guy, didn’t like drawing attention to himself. He wouldn’t even go down to pick up his plaque when he was voted into the Deker Hall of Fame. I picked it up for him.”

During his 22 years as chief of neurosurgery, Kahn trained 44 residents, 16 of whom became the heads or assistant heads of their own university neurosurgery departments. If Albert Kahn is still on the short list of great American architects, his son is still on the short list of great American surgeons. Although surgical advances aren’t as obvious a legacy as architectural landmarks, Kahn invented enough surgical tools and innovations to be named president of the Society of Neurological Surgery, the field’s first and foremost organization.

“He wanted to be known as Eddie Kahn,” longtime protégé Dr. Dave Dickinson said, “and not as Albert’s son.”

It’s fair to say, when he died in 1985 at the age of 85, that Dr. Kahn’s lifelong quest to make a name for himself was a success.

Thinking back on his old friend and mentor, Rudy Reichert says, “He was just a remarkable guy.”

John U. Bacon

JOHN U. BACON is a sports columnist, radio commentator, and author. His latest book, "Fourth and Long," was released in September 2013. He also coauthored "Bo's Lasting Lessons" with the late Coach Schembechler. He provides weekly commentary on Michigan Radio and at johnubacon.com

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COMMENTS

Dave Rutkowsi - 64 & 66

Steven Giannotta - 1972

In 1971 he retired form surgery (except for his favorite operation, carpal tunnel release, but he was still an active teacher and mentor. As a 3rd year neurosurgery resident, we played hookey one afternoon to Barton Hills. We played them in order that day. You can add me to the list of future chairmen who were inspired by Eddie.

Marilyn Clark Kiesel

Susan Chandler - 1975

My husband trained at UM in neurosurgery and I always looked forward to talking with Eddie at neurosurgery events. Eddie was always wonderfully enthusiastic except when asked whether he was, in fact, the inspiration for the Lloyd C. Douglas novel The Magnificent Obsession. Eddie denied this but we understood that he and Douglas were friends and maybe even roommates at UM.

Marjorie Korenblit - 1965

Grant Hildebrand - 1957, 1964

I am the author of what I believe may have turned out to be the definitive book on Edgar Kahn’s father, published by MIT in 1974. In its preparation tried to interview Dr. Kahn, but he was a busy man, I was very young and rather in awe of him, and feeling I was imposing, after a few tries to make an appointment I let the opportunity go. I have always regretted that; I should have persevered. I believe Edgar was close to his father, and could have added significantly to the story. Thank you for this essay on a remarkable man, son of a remarkable father. Grant Hildebrand, ’57, ’64, Seattle

anna ercoli schnitzer - 1969-70

carol rose kahn

Thank you, John, for the wonderful birthday gift you gave me with the story about my dad. I called him “Daddy.” I also enjoyed myself this morning listening to WUOM public radio and hearing the stories. There were many legends about him. We never knew which were true. My favorite was that he always bought a new Cadillac when the ash tray became full. He outskated my sisters and I with a grin on his face in his 60s. He loved and adored his students and was responsible for bringing neurosurgical residents from Nigeria, Korea, and South America to study in Ann Arbor. He also convinced the university to hire the expert neuroanatomist Elizabeth Crosby. Hockey and baseball may have taught him how to work as a collaborator and a leader.
The Mercedes was blue, a 1964, 220 SE and we drove to Gainsley gas station and would say, “Charge it to Daddy.” I still have not read the book “Magnificent Obsession”(even though I have a copy in my library). My son has been asking about this legend. Then there are the endless stories about his “absent-mindedness”… So, in keeping with his spirit of always learning new skills, I hope this year to start playing hockey with the women’s league. Please, any former patients or colleagues, I would love to hear your stories. C. Kahn, RN

Lydia Brashear Tiede - 1987

Eddie Kahn was my great uncle. At family gatherings he was always so interested in what you were doing, even when I was quite young. My father (also a Michigan grad) and I would occasionally meet him for lunch in Ann Arbor when I was an undergraduate. He was one of the most vibrant people I have ever met. I remember he had so much energy, he would usually get up at the restaurant and walk around a bit!

About the Author

JOHN U. BACON is a sports columnist, radio commentator, and author. His latest book, "Fourth and Long," was released in September 2013. He also coauthored "Bo's Lasting Lessons" with the late Coach Schembechler. He provides weekly commentary on Michigan Radio and at johnubacon.com